Computer Repair n Tips

Earlier driver, and I also turned off the in-game overlay (which I'd never had on, on the old computer). So far, I'm cautiously optimistic. Skyrim didn't crash yet. Creativerse didn't crash yet. Neither did Sherlock Holmes/Devil's Daughter, though I haven't played any of them for long, long periods of time. We'll see.

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Just an update about the black boxes issue. I turned off the hardware acceleration in the Chrome settings, and so far, so good. I haven't been getting the black boxes since then.

Hopefully those of you with a similar problem were also able to fix the problem with this setting.

@Tacitus or anyone who can help me avoid screwing up my computer, I have a couple questions:

I'm thinking of adding Linux Mint Cinnamon to my second hard drive so I can duel boot. Windows 7 is on the primary hard drive. Right now I have the live USB version of LMC on a 2gb flash drive.

Question: My second hard drive is 320gb with a bunch of movies, and only 38gb free space. Can I partition the 2nd hard drive without losing the data? I downloaded EaseUS Disk Partition software to do this but I'm a bit chicken to try.

Why do you want to partition the drive?

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If I don't partition it and just add Linux OS to it, it will erase all the data.

Sorry, I totally missed that.

I'm always wary of partitioning drives unless I have to. Personally I'd much rather add a hard drive and use one for each thing - Never hurts to back up your media files anyway. I've got some of mine backed up twice.

Yeah, backing up is good! I found that out a couple months ago when I crashed Windows 7 and had to reinstall So much work to re-tweak all the settings....And I was heartbroken that my years of family and travel photos were lost. Or so I thought. I did manage to rescue them by using Puppy Linux run from a CD and was able to access the Windows files that way. Since then I've been pretty good about backing up to an external hard drive. Though I did once have an external hard drive fail and lost all the data on it, so like you said two back ups are better than one.

UGH! The same games are still freezing up on the new computer. Today hubby switched out the power supply on the new rig... so now I have the same good power supply and graphics card that you recommended to me a few years ago, Taccy, but now in the new computer, which has twice the RAM of my old, SLOW computer, plus three times the hard disk space.

Discouraging to have the same Steam games freeze up still. (So far it's been Skyrim and Creativerse. Haven't checked the Sherlock Holmes game yet.) The only jury-rigging hubby had to do was plug the fans into the mobo's fan power port because this power supply doesn't have the right cable ends for the fan plugs and none of his adapters will work. Everything seems to be running fine, though. (The benefits of a silly glass case: you can see if the fans are running, etc.) I have no idea if that would make the games freeze up. I doubt it.

Any clues what I should do, Taccy? Any idea of a GeForce driver is the culprit? Trying not to feel really upset with the computer manufacturer that this new machine (the most expensive computer I've ever bought) is so sub-standard, when it was advertised as a gaming rig to begin with. (That was a joke -- I definitely had to swap out the integrated graphics card right away.)

GAHHHH! Frustrated.

Gah, that must be so frustrating. It's still freezing with the replacement GPU and PSU?

Personally I'd be swallowing hard and asking for a refund.

Refund on which thing? The actual computer? I've changed out so much stuff that I do NOT want to put it all back and then take it back or send it back at this point.

Yeah, I've now replaced the graphics card and the power supply, and tacked on the old hard drive in addition to the new one. Not really ready to start all over again.

Yep, the PC itself.

Ugh, well, we'll see. Best Buy already cut me a deal because it arrived with the keyboard busted. (I wasn't gonna use their keyboard anyway, but if they wanted to refund me $60 for it, I was fine with that!)

I'm keeping an eye on it for now. Once in a while the screen goes black for a second but then recovers. And once in a while even Facebook freezes up for a second but also recovers. If it's not the power supply or the graphics cards, could it be the mobo? How does one check that sort of thing?

It could be RAM. In fact, it quite possibly is RAM.

You can remove and re-seat your RAM sticks just to make sure that's been done properly initially, then run a test tool like Windows memory diagnostic, the built-in app.

Best free anti-virus programs for PC? I tried a few, and then deleted a few. Couldn't even delete a file with Spy Hunter..
I caught a virus a few weeks ago, won't even let me quick restore. I have to keep it on airplane mode half the time to avoid random audio advertisements.

If you have Windows for an operating system, then the Best free anti-virus program, is Microsoft Security Essentials. It's a free download from Microsoft.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/down...s.aspx?id=5201

Have you tried cleaning your computer? Sometimes that a fast an easy solution. If you don't already have it, download and run CCleaner. With any download of software, pay attention and read everything as you download and install it.
https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/det..._standard.html


BUT if that doesn't do it, you'll need to pull out the heavy guns to clean it. This is an excellent tutorial on how to do that.
https://forums.majorgeeks.com/thread...ijacker.35407/

Thanks. I downloaded it, but It says I already have it, and won't work when I tried the Windows Defender.. I can't update, anything - it's the most difficult virus I've ever had to deal with.

Matt go through that entire tutorial from Major Geeks, 99% of the time that will work. Other than that method, you'd have to take it in for repair which cost a lot of money.

Bump!

Building a new work computer. Since this is my second time, the initial steps went a lot smoother: I got it powering on and the fans whirring pretty quick.

However, I've had trouble with the monitor. Can't get it detected with HDMI or VGA. At first I thought "oh, duh, I didn't hook up the VGA cables to the power supply." But that led to another issue: when I do plug them in, the computer won't power on any more. I've got a 650W PSU and no graphics card in here (yet), so I can't imagine the power isn't good enough. I tried a second set of VGA plugs, as well as the second VGA port in the PSU (though I haven't done the combination of second plugs on first port yet), and still nothing. Whirs up fine when they're not plugged into the VGA slot on the motherboard, refuses to whir up when it is.

Anyone have any ideas? Also would be interested to know whether I should even theoretically need these to get the monitor running.

I've got an extra graphics card I'm going to bring from home and plug directly into that. I used someone else's old card here for testing, and the computer did start up when that was plugged in (but the monitor still wasn't detected). Weird.

Gonna bump one more time.

I brought a graphics card from home, plugged the VGA in there. Whirs up fine, but still nothing to the monitor.

Can anyone tell me what the minimum number of things I need to get the BIOS showing should be? Motherboard, processor, power, obviously. RAM, too, right? Is that it?

Have you tried a different monitor, just to be sure? Or try the first one on another machine?

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